"It is written among the limitless constellations of the celestial heavens, and in the depths of the emerald seas....the world which we see is an outward and visible dream of an inward and invisible reality."

Yeah, it doesn't, does it?: Seems to be another "All Pixar makes is stupid sequels"--having never heard of the Circle 7 troubles--because they just saw the new full trailer to Cars 3. And, of course, "Oh no, they're making another Cars film, didn't they learn their lesson with Cars 2?" Despite the fact that the new Cars 3 full-trailer (the one that premiered with Guardians 2, and shows us some actual plot BESIDES Lightning being smashed to smithereenies) looks, if not good, like a fairly not-bad Apology-Sequel that tries to fix the story by taking it back to (racing) formula and making Lightning the main character again. Which is what Lasseter wanted Cars 2 to be all along, before it lost its way.

The specific article question, though, is "Did Disney (ie. Bob Iger) ruin Pixar?", and while Dory, TS3 and Monsters U were EIsner's fault, if Cars 3 and TS4 underachieve, well, yes, we can put the blame on Iger's head for forcing it on them. Inside Out, Coco and Incredibles 2 were house brews.

Ben wrote: ...But he didn't force it on them! They said they really wanted to make it!

They did, once they had an actual story in place that they got excited about. But there first had to be that strong motivation to write that story in the first place, whether or not they had been planning to.

Strange piece, fairly poorly written and researched, which keeps contradicting itself. Sequels bad...Toy Story 3 good. Disney owned the Oscars...Dory shut out, but no mention that it itself was a sequel and, as you say, they don't mention the original titles the studio is putting out.

Disney co-financed Toy Story? Think you'll find they financed the entire thing and basically set Pixar up with the proceeds. And, of course, they've inadvertently been financing them ever since (my feeling being that there would BE no Pixar features without Disney's initial cash and - most specifically - that awesome marketing machine).

And I love how all the movies after when Disney bought Pixar are "bad", as if they didn't take four or more years to make and just happened the next month after. Sheesh. This piece seemingly slams DisneyToons but appears to praise the Planes films with a positive Lasseter quote, but then takes a cynical swipe at him too!

"Would Pixar even bother making those pictures anymore?" Well, yes. As well as Coco, you can bet whatever Pete Docter comes up with next will blow this kind of lazy writing out of the water.

(Eisner had *nothing* to do with any of the Toy, Nemo or Monsters sequels.)

Ben wrote:(Eisner had *nothing* to do with any of the Toy, Nemo or Monsters sequels.)

Well, Circle 7 was still Eisner's "fault", and certainly added to the list of grievances from the board for his departure.Lasseter may have insisted that TS3, Dory and Monsters U be completely new in-house scripts for legal purposes, but the idea of making them certainly wasn't their own.

(And at least Good Dinosaur only got a passing offscreen reference to "other" films that hadn't done well--For a second there, thought the nutty author was going to blame THAT one on them too, instead of the patched-together script.)

Toy Story 3 had been talked about at Pixar long before C7 came along. When C7's TS3 was mooted, Lasseter was even vocal about saying how he had envisioned the series ending (in a daycare center as we eventually saw).

Dory wasn't a consideration until well after Eisner, and even then still arguably more about giving Stanton back some cred. Monsters? Docter said he had an idea where to go (which we still might see one day?) but the prequel idea also came along much later.

As for the almost Good Dino miss, that author clearly didn't do any real research. It's a biased piece bending facts and dropping others to make the narrative work. Quite why they have this view is beyond me, like a fanboy throwing a tantrum because there's one or two too many sequels coming down the pipe.

Fact: Pixar's third film was a sequel. They've been doing it since the start and will keep playing the Hollywood game. On the flipside, if they *didn't* commit to an Incredibles 2, then this guy would equally bemoan the fact that "we've been promised a Brad Bird follow up since the first came out...wah, wah, waaaaah......"

I haven't checked (someone more pedantic please do!) but I'd guess the originals outweigh the number of sequels Pixar have released, even if it's a pretty even number. And they still only really do have two longterm franchises in Toy Story and Cars (nothing else has made it past two as far as I can recall), proving that even the mighty Pixar isn't infallible or beyond chasing the easy buck.

And let's not even get into the fact that the original TS pitch was to reuse Tinny from the Tin Toy short, which would have made their first film, technically, a (whisper it) s-e-q-u-e-l...!

Ben wrote:As for the almost Good Dino miss, that author clearly didn't do any real research. It's a biased piece bending facts and dropping others to make the narrative work. Quite why they have this view is beyond me, like a fanboy throwing a tantrum because there's one or two too many sequels coming down the pipe.

The reason: It's Cars 2. Beginning, end, period. Like a Star Wars fan ranting against Eps. VII & VIII because he just can't let Phantom Menace go, any sequel that Pixar ever makes, good (Monsters U) or bad (Dory) will utterly guilt-by-association remind them that if Pixar had never, ever made sequels at all, we would never have gotten Cars 2.That's why audiences came with the kerosene ready to burn Toon's two Planes movies at the stake (1 was okay, 2 was pretty darn good), because they still needed their thirst for justice quenched against the crimes of vehicles-with-eyes.(Might also be the jilted-at-the-altar feeling of seeing the first Pixar that broke Up/TS3's string of Best Picture nominations, even for those who thought Brave was a good movie, but blamed the bad one for "betraying us"...Hmm, article didn't mention Brave either.)

And for those who didn't see last week's final Cars 3 trailer that suddenly pushed the columnist's traumatized panic button, said the S-word and set him off again:

"It is written among the limitless constellations of the celestial heavens, and in the depths of the emerald seas....the world which we see is an outward and visible dream of an inward and invisible reality."